| The first excerpt represents the element of Air. It speaks of mental influences and the process of thought, and is drawn from The Market-Place by Harold Frederic: that is, you know from experience what poverty is?"
Thorpe nodded with eloquent gravity.
"Well--but you"--the other began, and then paused.
"What I mean is," he resumed, "you were never, at any rate,
responsible to anybody but yourself. If you had only a
sovereign a day, or a sovereign a week, for that matter,
you could accommodate yourself to the requirements
of the situation. I don't mean that you would enjoy
it any more than I should--but at least it was open
to you to do it, without attracting much attention.
But with me placed in my ridiculous position--poverty
The Market-Place |
The second excerpt represents the element of Fire. It speaks of emotional influences and base passions, and is drawn from American Notes by Rudyard Kipling: Talmage and some others, I perceived that I had been listening to
a very mild specimen. Yet that man, with his brutal gold and
silver idols, his hands-in-pocket, cigar-in-mouth, and
hat-on-the-back-of-the-head style of dealing with the sacred
vessels, would count himself, spiritually, quite competent to
send a mission to convert the Indians.
All that Sunday I listened to people who said that the mere fact
of spiking down strips of iron to wood, and getting a steam and
iron thing to run along them was progress, that the telephone was
progress, and the net-work of wires overhead was progress. They
repeated their statements again and again.
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| The third excerpt represents the element of Water. It speaks of pure spiritual influences and feelings of love, and is drawn from Theaetetus by Plato: endless number; and out of the union and friction of them there is
generated a progeny endless in number, having two forms, sense and the
object of sense, which are ever breaking forth and coming to the birth at
the same moment. The senses are variously named hearing, seeing, smelling;
there is the sense of heat, cold, pleasure, pain, desire, fear, and many
more which have names, as well as innumerable others which are without
them; each has its kindred object,--each variety of colour has a
corresponding variety of sight, and so with sound and hearing, and with the
rest of the senses and the objects akin to them. Do you see, Theaetetus,
the bearings of this tale on the preceding argument?
THEAETETUS: Indeed I do not.
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The fourth excerpt represents the element of Earth. It speaks of physical influences and the impact of the unseen on the visible world, and is drawn from On Revenues by Xenophon: revert to ancient history. At the present moment there are hundreds of
human beings in the mines let out on the same principle.[16] And given
that my proposal were carried into effect, the only novelty in it is
that, just as the individual in acquiring the ownership of a gang of
slaves finds himself at once provided with a permanent source of
income, so the state, in like fashion, should possess herself of a
body of public slaves, to the number, say, of three for every Athenian
citizen.[17] As to the feasability of our proposals, I challenge any
one whom it may concern to test the scheme point by point, and to give
his verdict.
[10] Reading {para ton pateron}, with Zurborg, after Wilamowitz-
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